December 05, 2012
Virginia woman sued for $750,000 over her 1-star Yelp! review

Angered by what she thought was shoddy work on her home, Fairfax resident Jane Perez did what has become the go-to form of retail vengeance in the Internet age: She logged on to Yelp and posted scathing reviews of the D.C. firm that did the job.

Perez ticked off a list of accusations, including damage to her home, an invoice for work the contractor did not perform and jewelry that disappeared. She closed one post by fuming, “Bottom line do not put yourself through this nightmare of a contractor.”
The contractor’s response to her one-star takedown? Fight back.

Christopher Dietz filed a $750,000 Internet defamation lawsuit against Perez last month, saying the postings on Yelp and others on Angie’s List were false and sent customers fleeing. He is also asking a Fairfax County court for a preliminary injunction to keep her from writing similar reviews. A hearing will be held Wednesday.

Lawyers say it is one of a growing number of defamation lawsuits over online reviews on sites such as Yelp, Angie’s List and Trip*Advisor and over Internet postings in general. They say the freewheeling and acerbic world of Web speech is colliding with the ever-growing importance of online reputations for businesses, doctors, restaurants, even teachers.
It’s snark vs. status.

No one keeps track of how many suits are filed over online reviews, and lawyers say the numbers are still small but are getting larger. Most of the suits fail because juries and the courts have sided with free speech and the rights of the reviewers to express their opinions.

With 84 million visitors a month and 33 million reviews, Yelp especially has become a legal battleground given that the reputations of restaurants, nail salons, dry cleaners and other businesses can be made or shredded in a few keystrokes. For instance, a Chicago plastic surgeon sued after a Yelp reviewer said he gave her “Frankenstein breasts.”

Perez, a retired captain in the armed services, said she never fathomed that her Yelp review could land her in court. It has left her reeling and potentially facing thousands of dollars in legal bills to defend herself.

“I don’t want to see what happened to me happen to anyone else,” Perez said.
Nevertheless, she stands by her reviews, saying that everything she wrote was truthfulabout the work Dietz did on the townhouse, where she lives with her dog.

Some reviewers and free-speech advocates, including Perez, see the cases as free-speech issues: They say the lawsuits are heavy-handed attempts to stifle critical — but valuable — consumer information that has forced businesses to be held accountable.

On the other side, business owners such as Dietz say they are forced to take extreme legal measures because the Internet has made defamation that much more damaging. A single false post can live virtually forever on a site and reach millions, causing untold harm.

Lawyers say such cases are a cautionary tale for a new era: Those who feel targeted by defamation on the Web are more likely to file suit, and judges and juries are more likely to take such claims seriously than in years past, raising the legal stakes over vitriolic reviews, nasty blog comments and Facebook feuds.

“As the Internet has matured, more and more people are feeling the sting of negative posts against them, and the public and jurors are getting more educated about the impacts this speech can have,” said Aaron Morris, a lawyer who handles Internet defamation cases.

Dietz said his small seven-year-old design and contracting firm had a good reputation. Two reviews on Yelp give him the highest rating — five stars — and one praises him as showing a “high degree of professionalism.”
But that reputation was devastated by Perez’s reviews, he said. He alleges in the lawsuit that they cost him $300,000 in business. The situation has also taken a toll on him personally.

“The impact has been awful,” Dietz said. “There is no one to protect businesses when people slam their name.”
The Communications Decency Act shields sites such as Yelp from defamation suits over content posted by third parties. And Yelp, like many review sites, says it simply can’t check the veracity of millions of reviews, leaving businesses and the site’s reviewers to sort out messy factual disputes.
A 2011 Harvard study quantified just how big an effect those negative Yelp postings can have: A one-star increase among reviews of Seattle restaurants led to a 5 to 9 percent growth in revenue.

Perez hired Dietz’s company, Dietz Development, when she moved to the area and needed cosmetic work done on her newly purchased Fairfax home, according to the lawsuit. Dietz, a high school friend, was to paint, refinish floors, perform electrical and plumbing work, and do other tasks in June 2011.

But things quickly spiraled out of control, Perez wrote in her Yelp post.
“I was . . . left with damage to my home and work that had to be reaccomplished for thousands more than originally estimated,” Perez wrote. She alleges that Dietz “was the only one with a key” when jewelry disappeared from her home and that he trespassed on her property, prompting her to call the police, among other issues in dispute.
Dietz says that he completed the job, that he did not damage the home, that Perez never paid him and that she demanded that he perform work beyond what was part of their agreement, according to the lawsuit. Perez denies those accusations.

Dietz also says Perez’s comments about the missing jewelry and trespassing amount to false accusations that he committed crimes. County court records show that Dietz has not been charged on either accusation.
In Virginia, someone can be found liable for defamation if he states or implies a false factual statement about a person or business that causes harm to the subject’s reputation. Opinions are generally protected by the First Amendment.

Lawyers say such lawsuits are on the rise because of the explosion in popularity of review sites such as Yelp. They also say that commentators are unfamiliar with what constitutes defamation and that others are lulled into a false sense of security online.

“There is a right to speak anony*mously on the Internet,” said Lee Berlik, a Reston lawyer who handles Internet defamation cases. “Armed with that right, I think people feel safe when they are sitting in their pajamas at their desks at home. They feel they have the right to say whatever they want.”

But that right does not extend to defamatory speech. Lawyers across the country are more aggressively using a combination of legal maneuvers and computer forensics to help uncover the identities of anonymous commentators and sue them.

And some of those cases are producing astronomical awards. This year, an Anaheim, Calif., technology company won a $1.6 million judgment against a blogger who had accused the company of stealing money from business associates. And in 2006, a Florida woman won a $11.3 million judgment after a Louisiana woman called her a “crook” and a “con artist” in an Internet forum.

Lawyers say businesses suing reviewers have met with less success. In fact, many such lawsuits have backfired. Some have generated negative publicity for the plaintiffs and have been looked at skeptically by courts.
Last year, a California judge ordered a dentist to pay the legal bills of the parents of a patient he sued for defamation over a negative review one of them posted on Yelp.

Mark Goldowitz, founder of the Public Participation Project, which monitors such lawsuits, said he sees a troubling trend in review site defamation cases such as the one in Fairfax. He thinks they are a threat to vibrant new communities that have sprung up around Yelp and other sites.

“The suits can have a chilling effect on people’s willingness to share information,” Goldowitz said. “It does lead to people not posting reviews for fear of getting sued and to taking them down when threatened by a lawsuit.”
His group is pushing for a federal law that allows defendants to seek early dismissal of lawsuits that are aimed at silencing voices on public issues. Twenty-seven states, including Maryland, and the District have such “anti-SLAPP” laws, but not Virginia, according to Public Participation Project.
Perez has removed her reviews from Yelp, her attorney said, because allegedly false comments Dietz made about her in his response post on Yelp were popping up as the first listing in Google searches on her name.
Berlik, the lawyer, has a few words of advice for those who want to avoid similar lawsuits: Stick to opinion and “tell the truth, and you won’t get into trouble.”

Lawyers say businesses suing reviewers have met with less success. In fact, many such lawsuits have backfired. Some have generated negative publicity for the plaintiffs and have been looked at skeptically by courts.
Last year, a California judge ordered a dentist to pay the legal bills of the parents of a patient he sued for defamation over a negative review one of them posted on Yelp.

I try to take a grain a of salt and look for a common theme, compliment or problem in reviews. Everyone knows there are morons in the world who will think shit is great and great is shit.

My personal opinion and that as a business owner is that it's perfectly fine for people to comment about your business honestly. I've gotten quite a bit of work BECAUSE people have posted about my work or product online or in topic specific forums.

The biggest thing I see is that there should be a space for the business to respond on the major sites. If someone buries you, you should have a space to contradict or explain the problem. Sometimes the best solutions is to ignore it and just work hard to get enough positive clients to drown out the hater.

I try to take a grain a of salt and look for a common theme, compliment or problem in reviews. Everyone knows there are morons in the world who will think shit is great and great is shit.

My personal opinion and that as a business owner is that it's perfectly fine for people to comment about your business honestly. I've gotten quite a bit of work BECAUSE people have posted about my work or product online or in topic specific forums.

The biggest thing I see is that there should be a space for the business to respond on the major sites. If someone buries you, you should have a space to contradict or explain the problem. Sometimes the best solutions is to ignore it and just work hard to get enough positive clients to drown out the hater.

Seems like the people who are pissed off (whether they should be or not) are the ones who go online to write reviews. The happy customers typically don't write reviews as often.

Example?
I had something installed in my home that cost several thousand dollars. The item would work a few times and then not....within the first year, I had 5 different techs in my home, costing me at least 3hrs per visit. Most insinuated some stupid thing was the culprit. By the 6th visit, I made it clear that if the next person arrived asked about that particular item...I was going to act irresponsibly.

Then....Boom. The item essentially explodes in my home, within feet of my children, whom were up most of the night, afraid our house would burn.

I guess you could say I was angry....and took it to their facebook, since it was a sunday and not office hours. They initially "liked" my comments....before reading them.

3 visits later by one of the owners and yet another tech, I helped them identify the problem.

How should I review that company? Would I be more motivated to yelp them or a company that just did what they were supposed to do and provided a quality product?

I understand why angry people are more likely to do it............but I'm also very happy to be vocal in support of companies or people who do a great job for me.

As a business owner, I've had people want refunds or replacement over the most nit-picky minute detail that would make the average customer laugh. But my stuff is guaranteed, so I replace it.

Word of mouth is important to me, and some of the most difficult customers have resulted in the most word of mouth sales for me.

I try to take a grain a of salt and look for a common theme, compliment or problem in reviews. Everyone knows there are morons in the world who will think shit is great and great is shit.

My personal opinion and that as a business owner is that it's perfectly fine for people to comment about your business honestly. I've gotten quite a bit of work BECAUSE people have posted about my work or product online or in topic specific forums.

The biggest thing I see is that there should be a space for the business to respond on the major sites. If someone buries you, you should have a space to contradict or explain the problem. Sometimes the best solutions is to ignore it and just work hard to get enough positive clients to drown out the hater.

The biggest issue i find when dealing with this is that for every 100 customers you do well with, the 1 customer who had the bad experience has the loudest voice.

We had a dickbag customer that we installed a front suspension on his car for, as well as paint and body. It was a $30K job and the car came out really, really nice.

The job ended up costing about $10K more than we anticipated on the estimate because after we stripped his car down, we found that it had more substantial rust than we thought.

All of this was discussed with the customer and he paid for the additional repairs beyond our initial estimate, even though he was uneasy about it.

After the work was done and he took the car home, he decided that we over charged him because some shop down the street from us (some ****ing hole in the wall) said they woulda done the work for half of what we charged.

So he sues us.

He tells the judge that we ripped him off because we charged him more than the original estimate and that our work wasn't good enough (bullshit, this car was immaculate and we had the pictures AND video to prove it).

He won the lawsuit for $15K.

Why?

Because even though the additional repairs were listed on the INVOICE and were paid for on the INVOICE, law requires it to be on the ESTIMATE first. Therefore, we over charged him based off of the initial estimate, even though he agreed and paid for the additional work.

On top of that, we're now on Rip off report because this dick bag went on there and spewed his bullshit story about how we ripped him off.

As a small business, we need a way to protect ourselves from this kinda bullshit.

The biggest issue i find when dealing with this is that for every 100 customers you do well with, the 1 customer who had the bad experience has the loudest voice.

We had a dickbag customer that we installed a front suspension on his car for, as well as paint and body. It was a $30K job and the car came out really, really nice.

The job ended up costing about $10K more than we anticipated on the estimate because after we stripped his car down, we found that it had more substantial rust than we thought.

All of this was discussed with the customer and he paid for the additional repairs beyond our initial estimate, even though he was uneasy about it.

After the work was done and he took the car home, he decided that we over charged him because some shop down the street from us (some ****ing hole in the wall) said they woulda done the work for half of what we charged.

So he sues us.

He tells the judge that we ripped him off because we charged him more than the original estimate and that our work wasn't good enough (bullshit, this car was immaculate and we had the pictures AND video to prove it).

He won the lawsuit for $15K.

Why?

Because even though the additional repairs were listed on the INVOICE and were paid for on the INVOICE, law requires it to be on the ESTIMATE first. Therefore, we over charged him based off of the initial estimate, even though he agreed and paid for the additional work.

On top of that, we're now on Rip off report because this dick bag went on there and spewed his bullshit story about how we ripped him off.

As a small business, we need a way to protect ourselves from this kinda bullshit.

ya, definitely see your point.

So can you do differently to make sure that never happens again? How does it work, you estimated 30k and that was in writing? Then after further inspection, you realized it's gonna cost 40K, so you call the customer and he agrees? No paper work on that?

The way you described it, it doesn't seem very fair to you at all. But something doesn't add up.

So can you do differently to make sure that never happens again? How does it work, you estimated 30k and that was in writing? Then after further inspection, you realized it's gonna cost 40K, so you call the customer and he agrees? No paper work on that?

The way you described it, it doesn't seem very fair to you at all. But something doesn't add up.

Initial estimate was for around 20K. After having to replace some frame rails and a large section of the 1/4 panel it upped to around 30K.

The initial estimate was the estimate he signed and agreed upon. Verbally he agreed with the additional work, and he signed his INVOICES.

Basically, we didn't have the 30K signed and agreed upon on the estimate, just the 20, so in the judges eyes we ripped him off by luring him in for 20K and then upping it to 30K. It wasn't the estimate he agreed on, even though he gave consent for the work and paid for it.

How do we protect ourselves? Make everything into an estimate first, both parties have to sign the estimate, and then run an invoice.

Lesson learned, but still pretty lame that we got screwed over like that.

YELP I think this is a bunch of BS on the part of business. Do your job right and take care of the customer.

Restaurants get shitty reviews in the paper all the time & I'm glad to find out about the shitty restaurants before I end up going there. They do the same on the interweb it's nice to read reviews & have expectations that way.

This is all that lady who sued McDonalds fault for her when she spilled hot coffee on her lap. Stupid bitch. America got dumber that day I am sad to say.